‘The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.’

Monday, 18 March 2013

A Post Union Future

The
ALP isn’t dead.

It has just been bludgeoned unconscious, is in a forced
coma, unable to open its eyes to make sense of the world.

The party is too
monolithic to be declared dead for at least another generation. Two former
leaders used two very opposite platforms last week to declare that the party can still
thrive, but they only succeeded in proving the opposite. Elaborate think pieces on the ALP’s future have turned into a cottage industry and may be the only thing
keeping the Australian publishing industry afloat. I am guilty of this too. Unfortunately my fellow prognostergators lack some much
needed insight.

The
problem for Labor, with its concentrated base of union affiliations and
financing, lies in the organisational imbalance between the new economy and
old-style unionism. In the workforce, unions have become a minority influence,
whereas inside the ALP, through the strength of the factional system, they have
maintained a majority complex, exercising control over party decision-making.

We
all know union and party membership are dwindling. The question is what to do about it? Follow 'The McKell Model' appears to be Latham's answer. In doing so he touches on the very point he fails to comprehend.
Reaching back more than 70 years to fix today's problems is certainly not the answer. Less than half the
retirees in Australia (incidentally Labor’s core membership base) know who
McKell was, let alone the model he created. Latham has fallen into the obvious trap.
He is thinking inside the existing paradigm. It no longer works.

Unionism as a
political force in Australia is gasping for air, dying a slow, painful death.

Ten years from now you can sign its death
certificate. Latham fails to acknowledge this and it renders the grand
pronouncements he makes on future policy directions meaningless.

The
question should now become:

How
can a supposed ‘left of centre’ (major) political party survive in Australia without the union movement?

As I
continue to progress with my PhD that is the central question I repeatedly
ask myself. Nobody inside the ALP is bold enough to ask that question, let
alone answer it, as they continue to clutch to the unions for survival. I was
hoping Latham may have come up with a well thought answer, but it seems to
allude him as well.

For
what it is worth, Kevin Rudd is unsurpringsly, in more denial than Latham.
Launching Troy Bramston's collection of Greatest Labor Speeches on Saturday, his ironically lacklustre speech essentially said ‘We’ve done more things than
the other guys and that’s what makes our party great’. That’s another problem
with Labor, history won’t save them as much as they hope it will. Harking back
to the days of Curtin, Whitlam and Hawke doesn’t tell them anything about how to approach a post
union future.

What
exactly does this post union future look like? The easiest and most awful
solution would be for the ALP to merge with the Greens, gaining back much of
the hard left vote whilst sharing their organisational infrastructure. Going by
historical precedence the only thing that will rescue the Centre Left from its
own stupidity is a fourth and final Labor split (over what? Immigration? Don’t be silly!) that renders the party rudderless (Pun!). Then a political
visionary must pick up the scraps to forge an entirely new path.

Obviously
from the above paragraph you can tell that I am not that person. Latham and Rudd though
have that potential. However, the first step is admitting you have a problem.
How many electoral defeats will that take? Hopefully just the one, but I’m not
counting on it.